The present invention relates to a document communication apparatus, such as a facsimile or an electronic mail device, which operates to send and receive document data through a communication medium, like an ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Networks), a public line of telecommunication, a radio channel or an office network (local area network; LAN).
In this type of document communication apparatus, for example, in a facsimile apparatus, there has been conventionally provided means for transmitting and receiving identification data for the other station composed of a phone number or a company name in the protocol of establishing the connection and means for displaying the identification data on a display or printing the identification data at the same time as outputting the document data, as a service for the users.
On the other hand, as disclosed in Thomas W. Malone et al.:Intelligent Information--Sharing Systems: Communications of the ACM. Vol. 30, No. 5, pp. 390-402 (May 1987), in electronic mail, there have been provided means for transmitting and receiving document data together with identification data or a document profile composed of a sender's name, a document title, the rank of an emergency or the like and means for displaying the identification data or document profile on a display. These days, since a computer or a modem is sold at a quite affordable price, a user may easily arrange such a communication apparatus by connecting his or her own computer to a LAN or a modem. Therefore, an increasing number of users have come to use electronic mail.
The primary goal which each of the service means as described above commonly has is to make it possible to ascertain a destination station to or from which data is to be transmitted or received. On the other hand, there also is a method for using the identification data for other purposes than ascertaining the destination station, such as calling a phone number of a destination station by using stored identification data, and displaying a list of documents received in which the documents received are sorted based on the identification data.
On the other hand, in a transmitted document, an operator on the side of the transmitting station may write a note on the document regarding a request for a document processing rule, that is, whether the document needs answer, whether it is to be treated urgently or whether it is to be treated as a classified document before transmitting the document data. In such case, an operator at the receiving station is required to actually read the document by displaying or printing each received document for executing the process requested by the transmitting station, and it is completely left to the receiver to read the document processing rule written on the document and determine how to process the document.
The apparatus as disclosed in JP-A-4-294655 is arranged to prepare a table for registering a processing level of transmitted electronic mail in a receiving side terminal so that the transmitting station may refer to the content of the table. Hence, if the processing is standing unsettled, the transmitting station can press the receiving station to advance the processing. Though the sender can press the receiver for the processing, how to process thereafter is carried out is left to the user.
As a system for transmitting a document profile according to a facsimile (communication) protocol, there are provided two systems, one for using the phase B which is slow, but far less erroneous, and the other for using the phase C as disclosed in JP-A-1-151874.